We are always using experiments to improve our lives, our community, and our work. Are you doing it efficiently? Or are you (incorrectly) changing one thing at a time and hoping for the best?
In this course, you will learn how to plan efficient experiments - testing with many variables. Our goal is to find the best results using only a few experiments. A key part of the course is how to optimize a system.
We use simple tools: starting with fast hand calculations, then we show how to use FREE software.
The course comes with slides, transcripts of all lectures, subtitles (English, Spanish and Portuguese; some Chinese and French), videos, audio files, source code, and a free textbook. You get to keep all of it, all freely downloadable.
This course is for anyone working in a company, or wanting to make changes to their life, their community, their neighbourhood. You don't need to be a statistician or scientist! There's something for everyone in here.
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What have prior students said about this course?
"This definitely is one of the most fruitful courses I have participated at Coursera, considering the takeaways and implementations! And so far I finished 12 [courses]."
"Excelente curso, flexible y con suficiente material didáctico fácilmente digerible y cómodo. No importa si se tiene pocas bases matemáticas o estadísticas, el curso proporciona casi toda explicación necesaria para un entendimiento alto."
"I wish I had enrolled in your course years ago -- it would have saved us a lot of time in optimizing experimental conditions." Jason Eriksen, 3 Jan 2017
"Interesting and developing both analytical and creative thinking. The lecturer took care to bring lots of real live examples which are fun to analyze." 20 February 2016.
"... love your style of presentation, and the examples you took from everyday life to explain things. It is very difficult to make such a mathematical course accessible and comprehensible to this wide a variety of people!"
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From the lesson

Getting more information, with fewer experiments

This is where the course gets tough and rough, but real. The quiz at the end if a tough one, so take it several times to be sure you have mastered the material - that's all that matters - understanding. We want to do as few experiments as possible, while still learning the most we can. Feel free to skip to module 5, which is the crucial learning from the whole course. You can come back here later. In module 4 we show how to do *practical* experiments that practitioners use everyday. We learn about important safeguards to ensure that we are not mislead by Mother Nature.